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Your Red Sister.
Daughter and sister, sister and mother, the same in their morbid bloodline. Daughters who went mad, who were driven to insanity by their father—theFather.
Daddy dearest longed for the long night.In the winter, we will forge a fresh path in a new world.
Fuck him, I thought, and my face morphed into a mocking grin.
He was the oldest being on this earth, but Hati and I were not far behind.
I let the notebook fall closed as I turned toward the bed. I pulled back the covers and slipped under. The scent of Sorina enveloped me, and it was almost like she was there with me—covering me in her dark embrace, whispering her omens and her riddles. I’d give anything to hear her voice fall away in my dreams, hush close in my waking hours.
What a gift to love these women, the Deacon had said.
He was right about that, at least.
Though it hurt to admit, I loved Valerie in my way. And I’d save her if I could. Just as I would guard Kyrie. Shield Jessica and Nicole.
Perhaps the Deacon thought once I found out I was not human, I’d leave them behind and finally take pursuit, snuffing out Sorina’s life as he couldn’t.
But I was the mocking kind, the killing kind.
And I’d tear him apart before I let him snuff out the light in this world.
No one was allowed to devour the sun but me.
EPILOGUE
It was always the icy breath of the trees that made Maria feel at peace.
She came to the woods to be alone. Away from the yelling voices and the shuddering exhale of her young life.
In waking days, her family was pristine and respectable.
Godly.
And in the nights came the arguments—the icing. The silent stares and aggressive exhales meant to wound.
So she left her parents and took to the woods near her home and the family church. In the heart of the trees was an old dumping ground, and she liked to look for treasures, though any she found were useless in the eyes of others. But in her bedroom windows, catching light, were old bottles, a tarnished bracelet, and a worn-down rock.
She would worry it each night.
But in the woods, she would sing. Not the hymnals of her church, not the songs led by her mother before the congregation. But the songs she played low in her room on the radio.
She wanted all she did not have—a life far from Hart Hollow, far from the Ozarks. Far from mother and sister.
Far from the ways her father suffocated.
She brought a book with her that chilly night that she’d checked it out from the library. She’d kept it far from her parents and siblings, often stuck between her mattress and box spring. But now Maria carried it like a lifeline, like a weapon, out into the fading evening sun.
Under the cover of the dead trees, she couldn't see the words well enough. So she pulled out a flashlight and sat on the old washing machine in the center of the dump. When she wasn’t singing, she read aloud sometimes to an imaginary audience, to herself on days she was not pretending.
And she didn’t see him watching. The girls never did.
He hovered closer around the opening in the trees, a slow circle.
Curious, the scent in the air intoxicated him, as it always did, even so soon after his last meal.
Maria was fifteen and seventy days. Sophomore year was fast approaching, young life ahead, vibrant red in her veins.
